Free Without a Trace by Liza Marklund Page B

editorial machinery had lived and worked according to those deadlines. Mornings were a time for staff to catch their breath, for contemplation, planning and, hopefully, reflection. The noise began to rise in the afternoons. Chair legs scraped across the linoleum floor. What to lead with? Was there anything from the regions? What did the news agencies have? And the mix! The mix had to be right! Entertainment? Sport? And something funny! Any amusing animals for page sixteen? A cat that had walked a hundred and eighty kilometres to get home? Pictures! The name and age of the cat!
    When darkness fell and the daytime staff had gone home, the light would shrink to islands around the newsdesk, the sports desk and the entertainment section. The noise was lower, more intense and focused. Heartbeats rose, the pace of activity increased and everyone was focused. As the clock approached 04.45, the deadline for deliveries to the Norrland flight, the atmosphere was tense. Hair on end, shirt-tails flapping, howls of rage at crashing computers, crisis calls from the print-works, always about the failure of the yellow plate to arrive on time, and could they try sending it again? Then, as the deadline passed, the sense of release once the night-editor had sent the last colour file and the message arrived telling them that the presses had started to roll in Akalla. Shoulders slumped and keyboards were pushed away. All of that was ancient history, these days. She didn’t understand why she even remembered it.
    Annika dropped her bag and raincoat on the floor and hooked her laptop into the wireless network. Her homepage was set to the
Evening Post
’s online edition: the paper’s surveillance of modern society was governed now by clicks. Not that that was anything to complain about. Active participation by the country’s citizens in its ultimate form. Give the people what the people want. Want to know who slept with whom in the
Big Brother
house last night? Click here! Watch grainy footage of a cheap duvet bouncing up and down in one corner, and remember to like us on Facebook! Or watch the car-chase right up to the crash! Watch an Indian man pop his eyeballs out! Must read – RIGHT NOW!
    The online updates happened in a constant, arrhythmic torrent, made up of every conceivable colour, all mixed together, meaning that the end result was inevitably brown. There was no day, no night. Just a constant howl of stress.
    She looked over at Schyman’s glass bunker. He was reading something on his computer, something very important from the look of it. It was ironic, really. He had turned the
Evening Post
into the biggest printed newspaper in Sweden just as that had ceased to matter, when the printed edition was merely an advertisement for the digital edition. The internet was what mattered, and online they were hopelessly outclassed in spite of all the infrastructure projects, high-tech digital solutions and android-based platforms. Their competitors owned the internet, not as a result of their journalism but because of their flashy adverts, street pictures and traffic information.
    ‘Good morning.’
    Annika looked up. Valter was disgracefully alert.
    ‘Can I sit here?’ He had already put his rucksack in Berit’s place.
    ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Welcome to another day in the citadel of free speech.’
    Valter Wennergren put a copy of the declining print edition of the paper on the desk, took off his jacket, laid it on top of his briefcase and sat down. ‘What are you doing today?’ he asked, sounding genuinely interested.
    ‘The Lerbergs,’ Annika said. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on Ingemar. Whether he dies or not, it’s a story. And there’s an alert out for his wife now. “Where is Nora?” You know the sort of thing … If anyone releases pictures of the kids, we’ll change that to “Where’s Mummy?” Or, even better, “Mummy, where are you?”’
    She handed him a copy of the picture of Nora that the police had